[Music] foreign [Music] [Music] matter where we feature Young Jamaicans who are shooting for the Stars I'm your host Margaret Boyne today we explore the fascinating world of Robotics and artificial intelligence AI once considered futuristic is now one of the most impactful and game-changing Technologies of our time my guess is the CEO of stone Technologies limited aerobotics and artificial intelligence company he's a past student of Campion college and is presently pursuing a masters in philosophy at the University of the West Indies join us on this captivating Journey as he shares his entrepreneurial Journey his research and explore the ways in which artificial intelligence is reshaping our world my guest is Matthew Stone welcome to mind over matter Matthew hey thanks for having me yeah man and I'm looking forward to this interview you know because I I've been searching for you for some time so you are the CEO of stone Technologies uh Robotics and artificial intelligence company tell me a little about the company when you started it an inspiration behind it yeah so we started around 2019. um I've always been interested in you know Robotics and you know the future where we have you know robots interacting with humans as we humans do right now uh so I've always kind of had a an interest in AI so you know I've also always kind of had a sort of entrepreneurial um you know motivations as well so I mean I've always wanted to start a company and I've always been kind of inspired by the whole startup culture in Silicon Valley uh in terms of stone technology is limited he actually started out from trying to solve a problem so a utility company in Jamaica they are approached uh I think one of my lectures about a problem that they had and the lecturer approached me you know asking if I could you know maybe well yeah so we had to create uh a model an AI model that could essentially detect um numbers on an electric meter uh you know several people had tried their hand at it but you know didn't really succeed um but you know I had a a big passion for AI so yeah I tried my hand on it and you know we actually found some success so that's kind of where this the company started out um where I wanted to have a company that could offer you know services in Ai and machine learning in the Jamaican space uh yeah I guess you could say that was our you know one of our first projects um you know although from that you know also I had interest in uh drones one of the projects that we're actually exploring is the use of autonomous drones uh for security and service so the particular uh application uh was for a problem that's still plaguing Jamaica right now uh pretty large uh you know our thieves would steal you know cows and agricultural produce uh so that actually entered several competitions uh with that particular idea we placed in a few you know we visited some you know asked about the problem and let's say it's a major problem they lose a lot of money from thieves coming onto the farm and stealing produce so the idea was essentially have these drones sort of uh monitoring the farm and if someone reached like a particular area in the farm the Drone would you know be dispatched and go toward the idea is to sort of create an extra form of deterrent so if a team comes on to the property you know if you have something literally just shining a light on you and right you'd probably think twice about sting you know especially if it's you know looking right at you um another project that we're also currently working on uh sub problem that's actually plaguing the coconut industry uh is label so they're actually having a labor shortage and the problem is right now to harvest coconuts because the coconut trees are so tall you actually need humans to climb up the trees to like get the Coconuts because there aren't much people that are able to do that right now and the people that are able to do that they basically have the industry at Ransom because there aren't a lot of people can't do it uh so we're actually also exploring the use of drones to actually the top of the tree and actually pick the Coconuts really yeah um so that's something that we are currently working on if we do pull it off it it would be the first of its kind um it's a problem that not just playing in Jamaica but like all over the world so anywhere that Harvest scope like India the Philippines Indonesia they're having that same labor shortage problem um they've tried you know people have tried different uh Solutions but yeah we think if we can pull off our solution it will turn out to be the best um a particular problem so how long have you been working on that particular um project this particular project um which we call a series um which is named after the Roman God of harvest um so we have like a some concept designs on the Prototype that actually build that we're working on right now uh we actually also entered a accelerator program the tech Beach accelerator program uh so we're currently in that as well we're hoping to get some funding for that project um yeah very interesting Matthew so tell me a little no um you went to Champion where were you considered uh you know intake a nerd or you know that's what they would call you or you consider that in school yeah yeah you could say so like uh you have always kind of had that label you know people say oh um yeah I've always been like you know interested in like certainly hope things work and um yeah I guess that that label as always kind of stuck with me like you know material is smarter yeah so I imagine you were a student then um yeah for the most part I I tend to there were some subjects I preferred over others of course you know some subjects that you know I didn't really find much interest in so maybe I didn't put like a ton of effort in um but definitely subjects that I had in like the science and the math like those ones are you know usually excellent um were you into gaming um well when I was younger I was like a big gamer uh you know a few games you know as you know most kids end up playing you know you Call of Duty or you need speed but um I honestly haven't had much time like I've been pretty busy with so much different projects I haven't had much time to um I haven't really even really thought of it you know what like you know gaming all right um what about up you have made any I will I would imagine you have um so that's actually when I came into this whole Tech um thing that's where it started with app development um more specifically um game development um so my one of my first apps that I created was in high school uh so this was our only time that I don't even remember the game Flappy Bird um no I think that was I mean I'm well sometimes it was this game in 2014. the very simple game we had this little bird that you know it was kind of flying at the screen but okay it was a craze around that time so I was like it was such a simple game like maybe I should try try creating a game like whole heart would that be right it was a simple I just like type into Google how to make a game and that really just started the whole like me um you're very obsessed with like creating products and like in Tech so um sent me down a rabbit's pool of like learning all these different Technologies learning how to create a game I'll spend literally always just you know coding and I remember even being on a bus one time I forgot my stuff because I was literally just here um but um what was really cool about that that was like my first experience of like creating something and like having people actually use it like that that feeling like somebody like enjoy something that you created um yeah it's like normal though so yeah that that really just it made me obsessed from there like you know you know thinking about what new products can I create what new problem can I solve and you know how can I get it in the hands of people um so I can you know yeah CD effect it has on them essentially I'm from there um you know when I was in high school in college uh I had created an App um to help students access their course content online at the time there wasn't a mobile app for it there was just like it could not up many people I tried before to create one but like none of them ever stuck but you know I was like yeah let me just try the Christmas you know and this probably should have been enjoying myself yeah I created that up and yeah it turned out to be like they go to the de facto app in the University um yeah I mean I've made several games and other apps um you know since then but yeah I said those are one of my first two memorable what is your research tell us a little about what your research is about right so my research is in a particular field called Deep reinforcement learning so let me kind of unpack that a bit so my area is in the field of artificial intelligence AI is really just all about getting machines to do tasks that normally humans would have to do so I've always been interested in robots and like how robots can operate in the real world and you know we want but robots did to have the ability to learn you know just as whole humans can learn they can learn and then carry out tasks so reinforcement learning is a particular way to make robots learn through trial and error so instead of you telling it or giving attention giving it an exact example of how to do the task just like our baby would kind of try different things you know pick up this and kind of learns about the world from from doing that or maybe you know how you even punish or reward that child or even your pet it kind of reinforces certain things to that child or pit it's the same way we would train these artificial agents we kind of give them a reward when something good you know punish them and they kind of learn from that would you say it kind of um mimics the brain yeah it mimics yeah exactly uh if you mix all the brain sort of rewards you when you do a particular task so the brain has these what's called dopamine receptors so you know you know when you get um food or something you get this sort of sense of it or you smell the sense of excitement it's your brain kind of rewarding you to like hey yeah even social media kind of takes advantage right right the reward receptors you get a like on a picture or something like that um so yeah it's the same thing really my research is specifically on how to make that um learning crico so one of the deficiencies of that sort of learning right now is that it takes a very long time and my job right now is trying to see how I can make that a lot faster what that will enable is for you know robots to learn a lot quicker in the real world in fact that very same technique I mean we'll end up talking about this later an interview I was using the chat GPT and the creation of GPT which everybody's talking about these days all right we'll talk a little about that later on so let's go and know um artificial intelligence so you know I have um a lot of young people who watches this so break it down tell us what is artificial intelligence you know in a simple way okay well you can bring it all into two terms they have artificial intelligence so we know intelligence um or best example of it is with you know humans um so humans have the ability to reason understand to plan um they have the ability to strategize to learn um so essentially we're trying to create an artificial form of that you know either a robot or maybe through a software program it's the the main aim of AI is essentially to recreate this same intelligence that a human has on sale machine or a computer so in our everyday we've lives we've actually been using forms of AI so anything that normally required human input we're generally trying to automate that um so for example even something as simple as detecting spam in your email is an example of AI um uh something as simple as finding a path from you know um from your home is AI it's finding a part um you have more advanced versions of that no with like the chatbot T and you know you have self-driving cars so like this that is an example of a task that once required humans no your car can drive itself so it's gonna it's gonna open up a world of possibilities where um you know a lot of things that required human input uh will no longer be required so yeah a lot of jobs existed before aren't going to be there anymore uh you might have new jobs you know that's a big debate you know what's going to happen at the job market but no one really knows but you know what we do it's going to automate a lot of jobs I'm going forward so what we don't realize though um is that we have been using artificial intelligence but um in our everyday lives but we probably don't even notice it because we don't say Siri Siri find my phone you know realize that that you know that's artificial intelligence even even when you use social media and the post that it recommends or if you go on Amazon and it recommends certain products like it sort of knows you and knows what you like that's even a form of artificial intelligence because really I'm sure when people talk about yeah they're really talking about machine learning which is a sub feeler yeah which is a form of AI where you're trying to trying to learn from data um so there's a lot of data on the internet we every time we use these products like the Facebook or The Tick Tock or the Instagram yes they are free but you're actually the product so they're making money from all that data that you're giving them so they say that they feed into these models that can essentially make predictions so they can make predictions about what you like what you don't like so they know what post to show you and that's how they keep you addicted to these platforms because it sort of learns their profile and learns what you want what you might like and that's a very powerful thing that a lot of people don't realize that the data that you give these companies for free uh they're making a whole lot of money from it and then to um some of us think we talk about China who is probably taking people data basically by force and we said why but we are giving them free we don't even know what I'm doing with it yeah exactly I mean that's a big that's happening right now even in the U.S um or The Tick Tock
uh you know practicing a big block of you know where what do they use in this data it's a very important question to ask because the data is very powerful data you can literally do a lot of uh things you can control a lot of things you can control the outcome of what people buy what people vote for you know these are all things that the data can affect uh it's a real concern that more people should really should should have you know what what are these big tech companies really doing my data and how much um um what are some of the errors though where AI will have the greatest positive impact you think on society um Healthcare it will not um ultimate a lot of tasks in that um research so even right you know um there are examples where I think AI was used to help our mind walk again um yeah um science it's gonna help with Transportation you know the hope is that if we do create these self-driving cars and all of these cars can self-drive it should reduce the amount of debts due to um traffic you know traffic debts um let me see I'm driving car thing hasn't been as easy as they thought oh yeah um that's a good point to bring up it hasn't um so you know you know people like Elon Musk who runs Tesla you know they've made teams oh we've had we're going to be having full self-driving by 2020 I mean it's 2023 I mean you do have examples of it in like very control scenarios like in California like you know like a fully um General self-driving car that can you can just put it in like in half a tree square or put it in India and just expect it to be okay like that where we're not anywhere near that quite yet um yeah but what would you definitely made a lot of advancements in the last few years um yeah you're right it they found that it is a lot harder which I predicted it's a lot harder than people thought um the arm element of a human you know when you're driving you might walk up on something suddenly or you know you have a Metallica turn rotor so you know so it's not as easy as I thought yeah exactly a lot of these self-driving cars are created is they use data so they use examples of people driving on a new tree in these models to sort of predict what to do the thing is driving in California is different from driving in Germany yeah yeah they're going to experience completely different from the ones over here that's the thing well I'm ready to reach a point where it can like fully adapt to like any scenario like until we reach that then um We're Not Gonna reach that level five like fully out like where you can literally remove the steering wheel and um yeah all right you mentioned about jobs um displacement um tell me let's talk a little about that there have been some concerns about it which Industries do you think are professions you believe will be most likely affected well well with the the new advancements in generative AI that's really brought up a lot of like interesting questions uh especially um the jobs that could be possibly automated no you know back in the day people thought that things like art you know you know being an artist those are things that humans will always have like crazy that would be left to the humans yeah I can do the the more like manual tasks and stuff like that we're finding out no that that's not the case so you know our artists are musicians are going to be replaced I'm definitely in the near term um a lot of jobs that generally are like um very repetitive tasks like data entry clerks stuff like that those are going to be automated away um I've said this multiple times and I'll say it again I think call centers are right for automations yeah that's gonna get out to me today um yeah self-driving technology gets better in the idea of a taxi driver uh that may get automated away um yeah there's a there's a whole lot of whole host of professions that even you know it's interesting because at first people had thought that you know it's a blue color workers that we're going to do we're in trouble you know the factory workers and so we're finding now it's not those that really are in trouble you know you know maybe a paralegal you don't need a parliament yes right I think you're doing it you don't need a secretary or an assistant anymore because I can do it you don't need a marketing um and Creator because yeah I can do that for you know like you don't need somebody writing a news Bridge yeah I can do that for yourself starting out it's actually the the white collar jobs are actually the ones that are very much indeed of being automated right now I think there's an example that this company called BuzzFeed that they fired like a bunch of people yes yeah because you know it it has gotten the technology has gotten so good like you know if things like writing content or creating content like hey I can do that you know easily all right persons will say though um Matthew when we think of the Industrial Revolution you know a lot of jobs were lost but a lot of jobs were created are you able to tell us what jobs will be created all right there's a few that have popped up already so you know so chart GPT is a tool that came out recently um it's basically like a chatbot chatbot on steroids it's like very good anything and it answers it for you you can so to write an essay on it writes it to you um now how you use it is very important so those questions they ask we'll call those prompts so you actually have people you have a new job that has actually been created called a prompt engineer awesome yeah so people are actually like create those questions that you asked chat gpts yes yeah of course it's spinning up for that no one yeah believe it or not that's an actual job I think what you will see you'll see a growth of jobs that have been there before so like things in data science machine learning you're going to see a lot of people probably start to go more towards so when they're so typically the typical jobs when someone goes to school back in the day where like oh I'm gonna be a doctor a lawyer so that's gonna change now because we're in a data driven World automation World content driven it's gonna be now oh I want to be a machine learning engineer I want to be a data scientist that's going to be the the new you know job that people then I want to go to school for um I think the idea of like going to school for a job is going to change a bit um I think the mindset is gonna have to change more of you know instead of hoping that there is some employee that's going to employ me when I come out of school it's more of okay how can I use these tools that exist to create my own um product or my create jobs or you know offer a service off of value so I think that's how Society is going to move forward from where it's you know the industrial move from the Industrial Age where it's like you know give students instructions you come into a job to do this task it's not going to be more like okay I have these tools how can I solve problems how can I add value to the world so yes there are jobs that have existed for a while will go away but it actually will open up an opportunity to create more growth and to create more wealth actually solve more problems bring more people into the economic sphere it's going to democratize learning so it's not you know the person who grew up in a certain home is going to get the best education anymore like everybody's going to be able to get a similar form of Education the thing about it even there the idea of being a YouTuber or a streamer 10 years ago your totally appearance that they laugh for you yeah now I have 19 year olds making millions yes so how possible that was not possible 20 years ago like a 19 year old telling you that they're making millions from their home that's possible no so I think it's going to open up possibilities that even right now even I or you can't even think of um yeah okay so what about jobs that will stay then [Music] laughs [Music]
2023-06-25